Ryan Gosling on pet personalities

The Globe & Mail, Canada’s paper of record, published a piece by Ryan Gosling today. Gosling is urging the pork industry to be more compassionate about how they treat pigs, pregnant pigs in particular. He does so by highlighting the fact that animals have personalities and introducing the audience to his dog George. George likes apples. He is well travelled. He’s even been on a talk show. In humanising George – and by extension the pigs – the reader can appreciate how devastating it would be for George, or any animal, when they are subjected to impossibly cruel business practices. It’s a very, very effective writing technique. It will certainly affect anyone with a pet. I have two pets, and I thought immediately about my boys, Marcus and Barney, and about how they have personalities – totally different, and sometimes annoying, personalities.

Marcus, for example, will only go to bed when everyone else is in bed. Around 9:30pm every night, he’ll start to corral everyone into the bedroom. And only once we’re all installed in bed will he get into bed, but only after Jacek lifts the covers for him so that he can jump up, UNDER the covers, and position himself in between Jacek’s legs. It takes him about 30 seconds to fall asleep.

Barney is a vengeful little prick. If he’s mad about being left alone at home, he goes for the books. He has destroyed almost 100 books from my bookshelf. There are other things lying around the house for him to desecrate, but he goes for books. Because I love books. I read every night. And that’s how he chooses to let me know he’s mad at me.

These are proper personalities. That’s what Gosling was doing. He was telling me that the pregnant pigs are like George and Marcus and Barney who are not unlike …us? Click here to read Gosling’s article.

In other Gosling news, he was NOT in a car accident in Iceland yesterday. But apparently there’s a dude who looks just like him who was.

As for that story about him planning to propose to Eva Mendes – it originated from STAR Magazine so… can we not waste our time?